Wipeout
May 22nd, 2005, 04:45 PM
When you think of a satisfying love story, what form of media jumps to mind? For many of us, films like Pretty Woman or Breakfast at Tiffany's are the first examples that pop into our heads. The more literary-minded among us may instead think of classic novels or plays, like Ethan Frome or Romeo and Juliet. The musically inclined may start humming any one of thousands of love songs that have been written and performed over the years. But even for those of us who count video games as a primary form of entertainment, a game is probably not the first or second example that comes to mind when the topic of love stories or romance is brought up.
In some sense it's understandable that we have a hard time coming up with good examples of romance in games, because love is not a topic that has been covered to much of a degree in most of them. Over the years, and as game technology has advanced and as game development budgets and team sizes have grown, developers have benefited from having gained more tools to use for both emphasizing plot development and creating more-memorable, dynamic characters. Also, now that many games include extensive voice work, the subtleties of intonation and the expressiveness of the human voice can be leveraged, as it is in music. Graphical technology, such as the facial animation that can be realistically created in Half-Life 2's Source engine, can now let digital characters be just as expressive and soundlessly emotive as any human actors.
With that technology, there still isn't that many games that have romance. The only games that comes to mind are the final fantasy series. Please list any others you know.
In some sense it's understandable that we have a hard time coming up with good examples of romance in games, because love is not a topic that has been covered to much of a degree in most of them. Over the years, and as game technology has advanced and as game development budgets and team sizes have grown, developers have benefited from having gained more tools to use for both emphasizing plot development and creating more-memorable, dynamic characters. Also, now that many games include extensive voice work, the subtleties of intonation and the expressiveness of the human voice can be leveraged, as it is in music. Graphical technology, such as the facial animation that can be realistically created in Half-Life 2's Source engine, can now let digital characters be just as expressive and soundlessly emotive as any human actors.
With that technology, there still isn't that many games that have romance. The only games that comes to mind are the final fantasy series. Please list any others you know.